Trust in the media overall has declined in the last year, but people’s trust in their favorite news outlet has grown. If we look at trust in the most general way, just under half (44 percent of adults) say their trust in the news has decreased in the last year. Fully 19 percent say it […]

The public and journalists expect the same things from the news media. The public just doesn’t think it’s getting it. What do people want from journalists? Above all, the public says it wants accuracy — for the media to verify and get the facts right. Fully 87 percent rank that as extremely or very important, […]

While the survey finds distinctions among attitudes and understanding of the media by factors like party and ideology, it also finds some significant and cautionary distinctions by age. Consistent with previous Media Insight Project research findings, and those of other research as well, the survey shows older Americans are more likely to seek out news, […]

Update Sept. 4, 2018: The insights and takeaways from API’s Thought Leader Summit on newsroom listening have been published in our report “How a culture of listening strengthens reporting and relationships.” The American Press Institute held a Thought Leader Summit on newsroom listening and dialogue projects on March 27 in Nashville, TN. It gathered community-minded […]

Digital Paywall Converters are people who bought a digital subscription because they hit a limit of free stories they could read online and wanted unlimited access. Their willingness to subscribe is highly driven by seeing many interesting articles over time, as well as wanting to support local journalism. Demographically, they stand apart in many ways—Digital […]

Topic Hunters are highly interested in one or two certain subjects—such as local politics or local college or high school sports—and this interest was a major motivation for them to subscribe. They look around for the best news available on these topics. They tend to be well educated (three-quarters have a college degree) and are […]

The Locally Engaged are a group keenly interested in content about the community and its institutions, and they want to be engaged and informed locally. They say that access to local news is a major reason they wanted a subscription to the paper, and they closely follow news about local politics or their immediate town […]

Social Media-Mobile Discoverers are subscribers who engage with the newspaper and its journalists on social media and read the paper on mobile devices. They get news on a cell phone often and use social media often, and they also interact with the newspaper through news alerts, following it or its journalists on social media, or […]

Journalism Advocates are motivated by wanting to support journalism, and for many, their immediate trigger to subscribe was either a concern about verbal attacks on the press or a response to messaging about quality journalism. Many Journalism Advocates rated their paper as reliable, noted the paper’s accuracy, and cited concerns about accuracy of other sources. […]

Life Changers as a group decide to subscribe because of a transition in their own circumstances, not because of something the newspaper itself recently did. In many ways, this is a group publishers can take clear steps to identify. Many have just moved to the area, and they picked up their new local paper when […]